Arturo Olavarría Bravo has been involved in Chilean politics since 1920, when he became Arturo Alessandri Palma’s presidential secretary. As a member of Congress, twice mentioned for the presidential candidacy of the Radical Party and three times a cabinet member, he has played an active role in recent Chilean political history. Since 1962 he has often written on his participation—for example, in Chile entre dos Alessandri: Memorias políticas, which began with his earliest experiences and closed with the administration of Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez and the crucial presidential campaign of 1964. In the volumes reviewed here the author chronicles the first three years of the administration of Eduardo Frei Montalva, Latin America’s first Christian Democratic chief executive. Olivarría plans three additional volumes to cover the second half of Frei’s term of office.
The Alessandrine eclipse and the Christian Democratic triumph in 1964 mark a turning point in twentieth-century Chilean political development. This turning point, in Olavarría’s opinion, is as important as the electoral victory of 1938, which swept the Popular Front into power and ushered in the era of Chilean Radicalism. Significantly, in both years the outgoing president was an Alessandri supported by rightist traditional elements. Further, in both years the victors were the first of their party to wear the presidential sash, and both won by promising sweeping reforms.
For twenty years before and after 1938 Olavarría was on the inside, as a Radical politician and ultimately as an intimate of President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (1952-1958). But for the past decade he has been on the outside, a disgruntled Radical and lately a supporter of Socialist Salvador Allende Gossens, the thrice-defeated presidential candidate of the Chilean far left. His new writings betray increasing disillusionment with traditional polities in the postwar era and skepticism about the future of Frei’s “revolution in liberty.” This is not an uncommon attitude among old line Radicals who have watched their party fall on relatively hard times. Olavarría’s political experience strengthens his chronicles, but his Radical background colors them too much.
For example, he justly assesses the early years of Frei’s administration as years of only moderate success and continued frustration in which no national problems have been solved. Nevertheless, throughout the work he places too much of the blame for this failure on the Christian Democrats and not enough on the Chilean political system. Chilean political change since 1964 has not produced a change in politics. Throughout the twentieth century the Chilean political system, in which party interests are all too often supreme to those of the nation, has held back any party which rises to national prominence.
Failure to recognize this fact is a serious weakness of Chile bajo la Democracia Cristiana. For example, Olavarría takes the Christian Democrats to task for Chile’s inflationary problems. Indeed Frei’s efforts to halt the spiral have not proved successful, and the cost of living has risen inexorably. He chides the Christian Democrats for unfulfilled campaign promises in this and other fields, and at one point suggests that since their success in the congressional elections of March 1965 they do not really care about fulfilling their obligations to the electorate. He is critical of the Christian Democrats’ dealings with United States copper and utility companies but offers no concrete alternatives to “Chileanization.” He criticizes, but not constructively, Frei’s agrarian reform scheme. In sum, when Olavarría treats the shortcomings of Chilean Christian Democracy’s difficult first three years as administration party, he does so from a monocausationist standpoint. For this reason his book shares the confining partisan subjectivism which permeates much of Chilean political writing.
Despite this weakness his discussions of internal party politics, executive-congressional relations and the great issues at stake in national politics are well grounded. At the end of each volume appear brief summaries in which the author assesses the year’s record of the Frei administration, and in these chapters (I, 421-425; II, 383-389; III, 339-342), he gives credit where due.
The volumes should still be useful to those who seek an understanding of recent Chilean national politics and the position of the Christian Democrats as an administration party, if they bear the above-noted objections in mind. But even when extended to the contemplated six volumes, Olavarría’s study will not be definitive. Quantity, alas, is not quality.